RE: paying well for experienced werewolf hunter
My name is Greg Van Helsing and I would like to meet with you to discuss this werewolf you have located. There is nobody with more experience than I.
The short, ludicrous email came with a hand drawn self portrait of ‘Greg Van Helsing’ depicting a grizzly looking man garbed only in black and wearing a leather hat that reminded Peter of Crocodile Dundee’s iconic headwear, but it too was black. It also contained his contact information and Peter’s excitement grew as his idea for Renea’s birthday present had just been presented with a possible evolution: a video to go with the framed emails - of which, there were several already with more coming in every couple of hours.
The cafe where Peter agreed to meet Greg Van Helsing was crowded, but Peter arrived early and secured a corner table. After the man’s ludicrous email response, which Peter simply could not resist replying to and asking for professional references to substantiate the claims made, they had a brief telephone conversation and agreed to meet for coffee. The guy was a whacko, obviously, but Peter felt as though he’d won the lottery.
He ordered a pair of small black coffees from a pleasant, but rather sad looking, young man working the counter. He pointed out the table, explained he was meeting someone, asked to have the coffees brought over when his company arrived, and then left a sizable tip before returning to his seat. Peter Mayhew set the camera on his phone to record and slipped it into the breast pocket of his navy blue polo, the super hd triple camera facing out and only barely sticking out of his shirt. And then he waited, watching the door with growing excitement.
Initially, he was worried that this Greg Van Helsing would be difficult to recognize, considering the self portrait contained in his email was clearly hand drawn. When a tall man dressed in black entered the cafe, warily eyeing the place, wearing the same (stupid) hat that was in the hand drawn portrait, Peter had little doubt that this was the man he was waiting for. He stood up and waved him over. The sad young man at the counter jumped to attention and both he and the man in black approached Peter’s table, arriving at nearly the same time.
“Here you are. Two black coffees,” the waiter said, placing one in front of Peter on the table. He placed the other in front of Peter’s guest, who fell heavily into his seat opposite. The young man smiled, though his fake smile could use some work, and Peter smiled back. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Greg Van Helsing looked at the coffee in front of him as though it were a bowl of squirming maggots. He looked up at Peter, lip curled.
“This cafe doesn’t have tea, or?” he asked, his British accent incongruous with his overly grizzly ‘Batman voice’ - like the Christian Bale, over-acted Batman voice.
It’s as if Batman and Alfred were the same, insane, person.
“I’m Peter,” Peter said, reaching out to shake Mr. Van Helsing’s hand.
The man glared at Peter’s outstretched hand for a moment, and then sighed heavily and leaned forward in his chair to shake it. “Greg.”
The handshake was brutally painful for Peter. He rubbed his throbbing hand gently below the table and tried not to wince.
“I kind of figured. Your hat,” he explained.
Greg grunted. “Let’s get to it. What reason do you have to suspect this woman of being a werewolf?”
Peter frowned. With little effort, he retrieved the mental image of his ad. He’d definitely written pitwolf. But as he scanned his memory, his lips pressed together tightly. Autocorrect had indeed altered his input from pitwolf to werewolf. With the phone in his pocket still recording though, he decided to roll with it.
“She has aggressive tendencies, lashes out at people she feels challenge her dominance, and has regular monthly cycles of increased rage.”
Greg nodded seriously. “Her cycle. Does it coincide with the full moon?”
“Hard to say, I haven’t been logging the cycle with any level of detail.” Peter frowned slightly as he considered the prospect. Had Kinsey’s rampages come around the time of the full moon? He couldn’t be sure, but as he mentally worked through Renea’s most recent rage-rants about the woman, he was shocked to realize that they did. For the last two months, at least.
“Has she been more aggressive than normal this week?”
“Much,” Peter said honestly. “She’s been a total monster this week.”
“Full moon,” Greg explained. He took off his hat and scratched at greasy, lank black hair. “I’ll have to get a look at her. Do you know where she is now?”
Peter had a sip of coffee, wincing. It was still too hot. “I do. But Greg, can I call you Greg or do you prefer Mr. Van Helsing?”
“Call me anything but Craig,” Greg said seriously, face souring. “Fuck Craigs.”
Confused, Peter laughed awkwardly. “Alright. I do know where we can find her, but I’ve got some questions first. Like, is your last name really Van Helsing? Like, of the Van Helsing Van Helsings?”
Greg Van Helsing looked at Peter like he’d just spit in his face, blinking rapidly as his eyebrows rose on his forehead. “Yes.”
“And uh, safe to assume you know Gabriel? The monster hunter?” It had been very difficult for Peter to ask that question with any amount of seriousness, but he pulled it off for the sake of the video recording in his pocket.
Greg rolled his eyes dramatically and raked both hands through the long black hair hanging from either side of his stupid hat. It was as though, with that single expression, he was telling Peter that literally everyone he had ever met asked that same question.
“Of course I know my brother,” Greg stated flatly. He looked at Peter with disgust, and spoke his next words slowly, as if speaking to a developmentally disabled child that didn’t speak English. “Do you know yours?”
Peter spilled a bit of coffee onto his khakis at that. “Your brother?” he asked, swiping at his crotch before the coffee could set into a stain. It was too late. The stain would remain on his khakis until they were washed.
Greg only grunted in response, still looking disdainfully down at his coffee.
“Have you, uh,” Peter stammered, trying to get more than grunts, one-word answers, or sarcastic remarks out of the guy for the sake of the video, “had much experience with werewolves?”
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Greg looked up at Peter under furrowed brows as if to say, “What do you think?”
“Okay,” Peter said slowly. He needed to salvage something from this meetup, but Greg wasn’t making it easy. “We’re just going to call that a ‘yes’. You said you need to see her to be sure. If she’s a werewolf, I mean. I do know where we might find her… My car or yours?”
Minutes later, Peter Mayhew’s arms and legs were wrapped tightly around Greg Van Helsing as the tall man sped through the city with reckless abandon on his oversized, black motorcycle. At this proximity, the strange man’s aroma was incredibly potent. He smelled of garlic and gunpowder.
“Shouldn’t I be wearing a helmet?” Peter shouted to be heard over the rushing wind and too-loud motorcycle.
“Only if we crash,” Greg dismissed him, cranking the gas and threading needle after needle between vehicles.
When they arrived at OUGPT’s corporate office, Greg parked in a handicap spot and the two men dismounted. Peter’s knees buckled. He tried in vain to smooth his ruffled hair with shaking hands, and noticed Greg giving him an odd look, brow raised.
“I’ve been told I’m a crazy driver, but I’ve never made someone piss their trousers because of it,” he said, glancing at the coffee stain on Peter’s crotch.
“It’s coffee!” Peter explained desperately. “And I’m sure you’re wrong on that count, Greg. I bet your driving caused pissed trousers all over the city just today.”
Greg considered it, and then simply shrugged his agreement to that possibility. “Where to?”
Peter’s lips scrunched up and brows knitted together as he thought about where exactly to take Greg Van Helsing in regards to his wife’s place of work. He realized then that this may not have been his best idea ever. He was seconds away from calling the whole thing a wash, apologizing for wasting the man’s time, and just buying Renea some fancy earrings or whatever for her birthday. Whether due to a cruel twist of fate or an unexpected stroke of luck, just before Peter began to apologize, a group of well-dressed professionals rounded the corner, Kinsey Fox at the front of the pack.
Kinsey Fox was not what Peter would consider an attractive woman. He did understand that his opinion would be in a silent minority, though. She was tall and slender with bright eyes and blond hair. She wore a tight, light blue dress made up of a thin, striped material that hugged her body like a child whose mother was attempting to set it down in a viper pit. She was, Peter acknowledged, what most men would consider very attractive. To him though, Kinsey’s holier-than-thou act in combination with her signature habit of nervous mouth twitches was a complete turnoff. Greg had noticed her as well, Peter realized, though he wasn’t certain his ‘noticing’ had anything to do with the task at hand.
“That’s her,” Peter whispered. “The one in front, the blond.”
“I guessed that,” came Greg’s grizzly reply.
The large man took a long look at Kinsey. Top to bottom, then from the bottom slowly all the way back to the top. He nodded, more to himself than to Peter it seemed, and then started rummaging through the travel bag attached to his motorcycle. When what could only be a projectile weapon emerged, Peter panicked.
“Put your damned gun away, Greg!” he whispered angrily. “You can’t just… just…”
“You’re the one who gave me the job. The pay’s good, that’s clearly a werewolf, and we’re already here.” Greg was now looking at Peter in incredulous confusion, an oddly designed firearm in one hand and what looked to be a silver stake in the other - both held out to his sides questioningly. Held out where anyone would see them if they only looked. “If we’re not here to, in your words, ‘promptly deal with this threat to all civilized peoples’, then what the hell are we doing here?”
“You wanted to confirm she’s a werewolf,” Peter said in hushed but increasingly aggravated tones. “Here we are. There she is. Confirm it! Don’t just pull out gods damned guns in the middle of the day at my wife’s gods damned office!”
“I’m telling you now that she is almost certainly a werewolf,” Greg said, matching Peter’s aggravation. “I can smell it. The only way to tell for sure though is to actually see her transform, or kill her and then watch to see if the body transforms under the light of the full moon.”
“And what the hell makes you think doing the latter first is a good idea? What if you’re wrong?!”
Their angry, whispered conversation did not go unnoticed by Kinsey’s group as they neared. Peter tried, and failed, to avoid eye contact with the pitwolf. There was hope, for only a fraction of a second, that she wouldn’t recognize him and simply keep walking. It almost went that way, but recognition seemed to hit her just after they passed Peter wildly attempting to push Greg’s arms down and turn the big man around.
“Peter?” Kinsey asked with the tone of anyone who had only recognized a passerby upon second glance, but was already certain of whom they’d failed to notice the first time. “It is you! Wow. It is so nice to see you! How’re things? It’s been, what, since the Christmas party?”
“Heh. Yeah,” Peter said, scratching awkwardly at the back of his head and hoping Greg’s weapons had been stowed out of view in time. He noticed Kinsey’s eyes flick to his crotch before meeting his own, now sporting a ridiculous smirk. “It’s coffee! I just spilled coffee on my pants. It isn’t pee.”
“Alright,” she said, looking down again and failing to sound entirely convinced. Her lips twitched and she unconsciously ran her tongue over them. It wasn’t sensual, more like the flick of a lizard’s tongue. “Well, hey, say hi to Renea for me alright? I’ve gotta run to yet another meeting. Again, really nice seeing you, Peter.”
“I get it,” Peter attempted to say casually while subtly tugging the waist of his polo over the stain on his crotch. “See ya later!”
Kinsey led her group toward the sterile, gray, four-story office building. Peter heard them snickering and saw them sneaking glances back at him. Greg, who had been blessedly silent throughout the interaction, was sniffing at the air after them like some kind of tracking dog.
“What kind of self-respecting professional adult snickers at a coffee stain on someone’s pants?” Peter muttered quietly to himself. “It could happen to anyone…”
Greg stopped sniffing at the air and turned back to face Peter. “She’s got the smell of the beast on her. I’m as sure as I can be without actually seeing a transformation. Let’s do this.”
Again, the big man approached the travel bag on his motorcycle. Hands waving wildly, Peter followed. “No, no, no. Even if you’re positive she’s a…” Peter stopped in disbelief at the words this man’s actions were making him spit out. “Even if you’re sure. You can’t just kill someone in broad daylight in a parking lot with cameras everywhere. What the hell are you thinking?”
Greg Van Helsing looked Peter over, thoroughly. “Cameras are taken care of and that monster is a danger to society. She needs to be put down. What’s this really about, Peter?”
“What?” Peter pleaded.
“You never actually believed she was a werewolf. Did you?”
“No!” Peter admitted, arms held out wide. “Nobody is a werewolf! They’re fictional creatures! She’s just a huge bitch that makes my wife’s job harder than it already is, which is significantly hard. And I’m not even entirely certain that you aren’t a fictional creature, or that I haven’t lost my damn mind. Listen, Greg, I’m sorry I dragged you out here and wasted your time. This whole thing was meant to be a joke, a fun story to tell Renea later. I’m recording all of it on my phone right now. Wait, what did you mean when you said the cameras were taken care of?”
Slowly, the first genuine smile Peter had seen on the gruff man spread across his face. And then he began laughing, a little chuff that quickly evolved into a booming chuckle. Peter stood there, arms folded, weight balanced on only one foot while the other tapped rhythmically as he waited for Greg Van Helsing to stop laughing at him.
“Your phone hasn’t recorded a damn thing,” he said finally, bent in a half-crouch with his hands firmly planted on his knees. He continued through weezing, barely controlled laughter. “I have an ability to sense, divert, and sometimes even disable nearby recording devices.”
Peter looked at Greg quizzically for a moment, attempting to come to a conclusion on which, of the two of them, was clinically insane. Clearly, at least one of them must be. Peter had no history of mental illness and there was nothing alarmy in his family to suggest he was even at risk. Still, when he pulled his phone out of his pocket to verify, Peter frowned deeply. The phone was still on, camera running. Peter Mayhew, stay-at-home-husband and hobbyist extraordinaire, narrowed his eyes at Greg Van Helsing, the wild, huge man that kept a small armory on his jet black motorcycle. Before a scathing remark escaped his lips, Peter stopped the recording and played the video. His brows furrowed as his expensive and trendy oPhone displayed nothing but a black screen with garbled, completely unintelligible sounds.
“How?” Peter choked out, still watching the nonsense his phone was showing him in disbelief.
“When we met,” Greg said, composing himself as his fit of laughter slowly tapered, “I didn’t take you for a skeptic. I’ve met skeptics, let me tell you. Between your general…” Greg eyed Peter up and down. “Peter-ness, and the ad you put up for help, I assumed you were already involved with or, at the very least, aware of the cabal.”
“Peter-ness? You just looked at all of me,” Peter said, hoping the pout he felt inside was being securely kept under wraps.
“Don’t pout, Peter. You’re a grown ass man.”
Chagrined and confused, Peter forced the expression from his face. He was still trying to wrap his mind around, well, the entirely unlikely scenario he found himself in. “Wait, cabal?”
“Don’t worry about it. Regardless, skeptic, that woman is a werewolf. I am Greg Van Helsing. And you, Peter Mayhew, should probably just catch a bus out of here or something.”
“You can’t give me a ride back to my car?” Peter immediately second guessed the wisdom of his request, flashbacks of tearing through traffic clinging to Greg’s back for his life playing in his mind. “Wait. What are you going to do? You’re not going to…”
“I am,” Greg said simply. He turned his back to Peter and once again began reaching into his bag of deadly weapons.